Transcript

Are you planning to rent a booth at a street fair or a carnival? Are you looking for booth display ideas that will actually bring you customers? Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi. Keep watching, ‘cuz in this video I’m gonna share with you three ideas that will actually get people to come to your booth and generate leads for your business.

By the way if you want to get a list of the seven tools that I rely on to run all of the marketing in my business, go to carmensognovi.com/tools. I’ll share with you everything from who we use for…for graphic design and printing. And I’ll even tell you about a mobile app that you can use to track your flyer distribution.

So if you’re going to be renting a booth at an event, it’s really important that you stay focused on your primary goal. Now remember, your primary goal is not just to get the word out about your business.

Your number one goal is to to generate leads for your business. In other words, you want to collect names, email addresses, and phone numbers to add to your customer database and keep in touch with them, so that you can actually follow up and turn those leads into customers.

Number 1: Brand Everything.

One of the best ways to stand out from your competitors at an event, is to make sure that everyone and everything at the event of yours is branded with your logo. This makes you look instantly much more professional, and it also gives the passersby immediate information about what it is that you do. So, any team members including yourself that are working the event, make sure you guys are all wearing t-shirts or polo shirts that have your logo emblazoned on it.

If you have some kind of an offer or a call to action that you can put really big and bold on the back, even better. Don’t just stop at t-shirts. Think about wearing hats as well. If you have a hat and a shirt that are both in bright, matching colors that have your logo on it, that’s really gonna stand out.

And then of course, don’t forget about your booth itself. There’s so many opportunities to get your branding out there with your booth. If you have the budget, you can actually get tent covers, and table…sorry, I forgot what they’re called -but sort of table covers customized with your logo.

And, if you really want to get fancy, you can actually also get side panels for your tent as well with your logo on there as well. If you’re on a smaller budget, but you still want a branded look, one inexpensive way to do it is by buying a vinyl banner and having that printed and customized with your logo.

So, vinyl banners -I usually get ours from esigns.com. They run about….maybe 20, 30 bucks. It’s pretty inexpensive obviously, depending on size. And, um…what we do, is we actually attach the banner to the front of our table using Velcro.

And so, it stays on really well, looks nice and clean and professional, but if you’re ever out of Velcro and this has happened to us on occasion, duct tape will do. It’s not as pretty, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Number 2: Don’t Stay in One Place

Don’t think that just because you rented a booth you have to stay at that booth at your event. Don’t forget that there are tons of people walking around this event all over the place and only a small portion of them may walk by your booth. Or maybe if they walk by your booth, only a portion of them will actually notice you.

So, you want to really take advantage of the entire event. The best way to do this is to keep one person always at the booth, ‘cuz obviously that needs to manned, but then have another person or maybe two or three people walking around the rest of the event with a clipboard. Now remember, they need to be decked out in your branded attire.

And they should walk around with a clipboard, going up to people, and letting them know about whatever special offer you’ve got going on that day at the fair. Now, if you’ve watched my other video on why you should should not hand out logo merchandise -I call it the “No Tote Bag Rule” -you’ll know that, um…I always recommend that you have some kind free trial or free offer that you’re giving away at an event like this.
So, you have your staff walking around with a clipboard, going up to people, introducing themselves, saying, “Hi, My name is Carmen, I’m from Urban Martial Arts, I just want to let you know that we’re actually giving away two free weeks of classes today.

If you’re interested just put down your name, number, and email address.” So, that way you’re not just relying on whatever foot traffic happens to pass by your booth. You’re actually making…uh..taking advantage of the entire event.

Number 3: Grab Their Attention

Don’t be shy about drawing people into your booth by whatever means necessary. So, play loud music at your booth. Umm…have a prize wheel -this is something that actually a lot of martial art schools put to great use. Have a mascot. So, let me talk a little more about those last two things.

So, prize wheel. You’ve probably seen those things where you spin it around, makes [makes ticking noise] kind of noise, and people love these things. Plus, it’s really noisy so it gets people to notice your table and see what’s going on.

And umm….and basically you have to be very strategic about the prizes that you put on the prize wheel. Because remember, what’s your number one goal at an event? To generate leads. Right? So you want to be capturing names, email addresses, and phone numbers. That’s it.

So, the prize that you give away needs to relate back to that. In other words, it shouldn’t be, for example, oh, spin this wheel and if you land on this particular square, then I’m gonna give you this free branded pen. Then they just take the pen and they go away and you haven’t captured their contact info.

The prizes need to be trials of your product or service. But, things that you are not going to give them right away. So, in other words, in order for them to claim the prize, they have to give you their contact information.

So, be very strategic about it. Think about what would make sense to give away in this kind of a prize wheel situation. But, make sure that it is something that they have to create an exchange with you where they give you their contact information in order for you to deliver this freebie to them.

Now one thing that we’ve put to use in the past is having a big mascot at our booth. So, back in the early days when we first started Urban Martial Arts, the first couple years when we did street fairs…um…that was when Kung Fu Panda was really big.

I don’t know if you guys remember that movie. But there were no actual Kung Fu Panda costumes available for rent. So what we did is, we kind of hobbled together our own bootleg version. So we basically rented a panda costume.

We put a karate uniform top with our logo on the panda and that became our Kung Fu Panda. And so what we would do is we would have this panda walking around, shaking hands with the kids, taking pictures, but one thing that’s really important is, we always had one of our staff members walking with the panda with a clipboard, talking to parents, talking about the two free weeks we were offering, collecting those names and numbers.

The one mistake that I see too many businesses do is, you have these cool things, right? You’re giving away balloons, you’re doing face painting, you’ve got mascots. So, you’re providing entertainment for the people at the fair, but you’re not able to generate that entertainment into something that benefits you.

Now, if you just want to do that just to kind of be part of the community and to give back, that’s fine, no problem. But, if your primary goal is to generate business for yourself, then you need to be strategic. So, if you’re gonna have a mascot, make sure that you’re then taking all that attention that’s being captured and funnel it into a way to capture all of those leads.

If you found this video useful, be sure to sign up to get email updates from me. Just go to carmensognovi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

And if you have a question you would like me to answer in a future video, just email it to me at info@carmensognovi.com.

Okay, it’s time for some shout outs! And it’s another Instagram edition. If you’re not already following me on Instagram be sure to to. I am @carmensognovi, very easy to find. So, I wanna shout out @JovelleChipriano, @ChampagneToCrayons, @beprismatic, and @MyKeel52.

I’ve linked to all of their profiles below. Be sure to check them out and to the people that I shouted out, thank you for your awesome comments on my Instagram posts. I love having you guys follow me there, it’s really fun to have conversations with you guys.

And, if you’re not following me on Instagram, make sure that you get started because you’re missing out!

Alright, thanks for watching.

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